


Catastrophe

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cats, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: It was motherless and cold and most likely sick, most likely weak as the day it was born and just as blind with exhaustion and hunger. It was dirty and smelled like musty pavement and grass.“It,” John said, glaring at Sherlock in that lightly-scolding way of his, “is a girl. And she is coming home with us.”
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 79





	Catastrophe

It was barely a third of a kilo and fit right in the palm of John’s hand like a stone clasped in his palm, curled up so small you couldn’t even see its ears. Fuzzy all around like a tiny, breathing kiwifruit; white with speckles and splotches of beige, brown, black. Calico. Around three weeks old, it seemed, from its barely-there fluff to its quiet snuffles as it slumbered on, blissfully unaware. Still damp from the rainstorm outside—should be ending at around eight or so and it was just past seven, had been raining all day in a permanent dreary downpour, barely just tapering down into a drizzle when the two of them, strolling home from a night out at Angelo’s, stumbled and nearly tripped over the soggy cardboard box on their way home.

It was motherless and cold and most likely sick, most likely weak as the day it was born and just as blind with exhaustion and hunger. It was dirty and smelled like musty pavement and grass.

 _“It,”_ John said, glaring at Sherlock in that lightly-scolding way of his, “is a girl. And _she_ is coming home with us.”

Sherlock inhaled. Looked at the kitten, cradled in John’s arms like something precious. Barely shivering, the tips of its fur darkened and faintly trembling in the grey air. John was bent over it with his head peering down, one hand with fingers splayed out and held over the kitten’s head, protecting it from the weather that kept puttering on—such was London.

“She,” Sherlock said, “has been abandoned by her mother. Most likely the weakest of the litter, a runt. _She_ is cold, malnourished, hungry for cat milk. _She_ has a highly-probable chance of not making the night.”

With every word, John seemed to draw in closer, fingers tightening imperceptibly as they stroked the kitten’s back, the nape of her neck; gentle, tender, so very carefully. There was a glint in his eye that only grew with Sherlock’s blunt truths, the muleheaded look that Sherlock knew all too well, knew it wouldn’t end well.

“And that is exactly why she is coming home with us,” John clipped out, that flinty-eyed stare daring Sherlock to argue, razor blades on his tongue fresh off the whetstone, and Sherlock sighed. He looked back at the kitten, who seemed to be awake, now—a pair of tiny twitching ears poking out of the bundle of fur. One of them had a patch of orange like a sunspot. John made a noise that could not have been described as anything other than a coo, and stroked her ears.

“You will be in charge of the litter box,” Sherlock said snippily.

John’s eyes softened as he looked up. A smile curling at his mouth. “Not a chance,” he said, and hefted the kitten closer to his chest. “Didn’t Mrs. Hudson own a cat once? I’m sure she’ll have some things leftover.”

He was off before Sherlock could reply, steps gentle and deliberate as to not jolt the bundle of warmth in his arms. Sherlock watched his back for a moment, then reluctantly followed, thinking of catnip and allergies.

Mrs. Hudson’s cat was named Chainsaw. It was her husband’s idea. (The first suggestion had been Cocaine, which was a head-in-the-door salesman technique if Sherlock ever heard one.) Chainsaw had been, as per Mrs. Hudson’s words herself, one bloody hell of a cat—muttered with an odd, disparaging fondness as she helped the two of them carry up boxes upon boxes of cat toys and old, smelly bags of litter.

“Scratched up all our sofas,” she hummed, smiling at John as he held open the door to their flat. “We even bought this sort of spray, you see, Cat Be Gone or something of the sort—smelled _awful,_ like rotten fish and eggs, and Chainsaw, well, he just breezed right by it. Not a care in the world. Peed all over the carpet.”

John laughed. Sherlock smiled tightly and unloaded a giant contraption covered with twine and pom-poms.

“Oh, that was his favourite,” Mrs. Hudson remarked. “Hissed up a storm every time I got close to that thing. I was just trying to hoover.”

“It’s a good thing we never hoover, then,” John said, directing a bit of a pointed look towards Sherlock, who scowled.

The rain had stopped by the time they had unloaded everything. The flat looked as if it had been torn apart and rampaged by a giant, cat-loving monster who’d strewn pieces of cat litter and tins of mostly-expired cat food all over the floor.

The culprit of all this chaos was curled up in the corner of the flat which John had declared to be the Cat Corner, in a pile of extra wool blankets they kept in the cupboards for the winter. Bright, alert eyes peeked up towards them, tracking their every move. A tail poked through the blankets, swishing back and forth.

Sherlock stopped his footsteps right in front of the kitten, who fixed her eyes upon his.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. The cat narrowed them back. The fur on the back of her neck puffed up like a heated marshmallow in a fire.

“Alright, you two, play nice,” John appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Sherlock by the shoulders and steering him away. “Sherlock, help me sweep up all this litter.”

“You were the one carrying the bags,” Sherlock muttered.

“Yeah, well. You were the one who walked right into me and made me drop them all. Now shut up and sweep.” A broom and a pan was thrust towards him, no-nonsense. Sherlock glared at it, then crossed his arms. 

“Sherlock,” John said.

“I’m allergic to cats,” Sherlock said.

John levelled an amused look at him. “No, you’re not.”

“I’m allergic to _this_ one,” Sherlock said.

“You don’t even _know_ her yet.”

“I know enough.”

“Jesus, you’re such a child sometimes.” John rolled his eyes, and then, propping the broom and pan against the wall, walked closer. He took Sherlock’s face in his hands, thumbs stroking his cheekbones, and leaned in to kiss him softly.

Sherlock huffed against John’s lips but kissed him back, a hand coming up to tangle in John’s hair, the other running long, languid lines down his spine. He felt John shiver before drawing away and smiled, just a little.

“It’s just a bloody cat,” John said. “You said it yourself—she was going to die. I know you wouldn’t have just left her there, either, so will you _please_ drop the ice princess act and just help me already?”

Sherlock pursed his lips and John kissed him again, just once, chaste before drawing back.

“Only if I get to name her,” Sherlock finally said.

John smiled. “As long as it’s not Cocaine.”

By the end of the night, the kitten had recovered to nearly full energy, thanks to John’s constant coddling and pampering and attention. Sherlock was reduced to running back and forth from the kitchen, fetching warm water to mix with the cat milk formula, exactly 38 degrees and steaming. 

“You look like a housewife,” Sherlock informed John during a sparse moment of rest, leaning against the kitchen wall and watching John gently tickle the kitten’s stomach with two fingers.

“Says the one testing the temperature of milk on his wrist,” John said, raising an eyebrow and grinning before devoting his focus back to the kitten. “I think she’s getting sleepy.”

Sleepy, Sherlock thought, aghast, and wondered if having a soft purring kitten in his arms had momentarily reduced John into a state of maternity. “It _is_ nearly ten,” he reasoned instead of saying that thought out loud, because while John was indeed cooing quietly and saying words like _Sleepy,_ he also had a Browning tucked into his belt and a wicked-sharp dagger hidden up his trouser leg.

John hummed. “Think she wants to sleep in our bed?”

“Vetoed,” Sherlock said immediately, mind dashing to thoughts of fur in his mouth and claws down his arms.

“Come on,” John coaxed.

“Vetoed,” Sherlock repeated.

“Spoilsport.”

“A kitten so young might not have control over its bladder functions just yet,” Sherlock said. “If you’d particularly enjoy waking up to her wetting our bed, be my guest.”

John was silent for a moment. “Arse,” he finally settled on, and then got up from the couch with a creak and a sigh. “Here,” he said, “hold her for a moment while I get the cat bed set up then.”

Sherlock held out his arms awkwardly, and John stilled, the kitten hovering inches above.

“Don’t drop her,” John said.

Sherlock gave John a Look. “No, really? I thought when you said _hold her for a moment_ you meant _toss her out the window.”_

“Don’t do that, either,” John said, and before Sherlock could huff and roll his eyes, deposited the kitten into Sherlock’s arms. “Stay,” he told the two of them, and then scurried off for the box at the door labelled _Chainsaw Bed._ (Which, out of context, sounded very strange. And intriguing. Sherlock filed it down for later consideration.)

The kitten stirred at the change in atmosphere, suddenly moving from the easy embrace of John’s arms to Sherlock’s stiff, careful hold. His estimate had been incorrect—she was lighter than he had imagined, perhaps by fifty grams or so. Even skinnier than she looked; all fur and no fat, her fragile bones shifted under Sherlock’s palms.

The kitten mewled and headbutted the back of Sherlock’s hand. 

“Hello,” Sherlock murmured cautiously, daring to stroke her ears. They felt like velvet. 

She perked up at the sound, ears twitching out of his grasp. She swivelled her grey-green gaze, catching on Sherlock—and then her purring sputtered and died, ears flattening atop her tiny fuzzy head, and she opened her mouth and bit down right on Sherlock’s thumb.

She barely had any teeth, white hard nubs that didn’t even break the skin. Sherlock jerked his hand away anyway, and then brought it back, because holding a squirming, restless kitten in one hand only was a one-way trip to disaster. The kitten’s mouth opened again, squirming harder, a paw coming up to bat at Sherlock’s hand—then his wrist, and, when he moved it out of reach, his chest, climbing up to his neck, his chin. 

“John,” Sherlock said, then, “JOHN.”

“What?” 

“I am precariously close to dropping your precious kitten,” Sherlock said, and John was there before he could even finish the sentence.

“What the—” John’s voice grew fainter, bewildered, as he watched Sherlock twist and turn his body away from the kitten, who was hissing, snakelike as she attempted to claw up Sherlock’s shirt, one paw still outreached and batting at Sherlock’s—nose, it seemed, or chin, or something or the other on his face.

“I would like you to remove this kitten,” Sherlock said.

John’s eyelid twitched. “I think she likes you.”

“Likes me?” Sherlock repeated, twisting his face around to shoot John an exasperated stare. “She is clawing my third-best button-up into shreds. She won’t stop hissing. She bit my thumb.”

“Oh, she loves you all right,” was John’s response. 

“What part of any of that indicates love,” Sherlock said flatly.

John’s eyes were twinkling, endlessly and way too amused. “Don’t you know cats are like certain impossible people?”

“I really don’t think now is the best time to play armchair psychologist,” Sherlock snapped, distracting by the way the kitten was currently fixated upon a piece of his hair that had unfortunately fallen out of place by her antics. She flattened down in Sherlock’s arms, wiggling her backside, whiskers trembling and ready to pounce—and _that_ was really not the best idea, now, having those tiny sharp claws digging into his head, and in a split second Sherlock decided that having John verbally scalp him was infinitely a better option than being actually scalped, and he loosened his hold and dropped the kitten from halfway up his height.

“Sherlock!” John yelped in a very undignified way, arms outstretched—needlessly, it seemed, for the kitten landed perfectly on four feet in the middle of the floor without a single noise. She blinked, and then twisted around to peer up at Sherlock, big eyes all affront and haughty disbelief.

“It was your fault,” Sherlock told her. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you to not bite the hand that feeds you?”

She hankered back down close to the floor again, this time with her gaze directed towards one of Sherlock’s trouser legs and bare slippered feet.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” Sherlock said quickly. “You can take care of the rest. Feel free to join me afterwards— _without_ the kitten.”

He heard John laughing all the way up the stairs.

The first few days brought a myriad of trips to the local pet store, calls to Mrs. Hudson, and many, many arguments about whose turn it was to clean the litter box. (John’s—it was always John’s turn.)

Initially, the kitten had been shaky and weak with hunger and cold, and it had the effect of making her appear almost smaller in a sense—not physically, but as if her presence was merely a tiny pigeonhole in the flat. But swiftly, so quickly neither of them saw it coming, that strength grew and grew until she had firmly established herself as the irrefutable queen in the household.

She grew heavier with every day, just an imperceptible bit bigger, ears beginning to fit proportionally with the rest of her body. Her eyes kept that watery, dinner-plate look, but it was only pulled in moments of desperation, when John was cooking and the smell of salmon drifted enticingly through the kitchen. Other times, they were calculating, whip-sharp, trained on a spider or a bloom of dust or a stray, rolling bullet behind the couch from the last time Sherlock cleaned the guns. John nearly had an aneurysm when he entered the living room to see her on her back, happy as a lamb, tossing and pouncing at the piece of metal like a squeaky toy rat.

Feisty little thing, she was. She made the two of them run rings around her. John loved it—was completely gone on her. Got antsy whenever she was out of sight for longer than twenty minutes, was constantly calling for her in a low, crooning voice. And she would always come, slinking out from underneath the coffee table or leaping from the windowpane into John’s lap or his arms, purring like a chainsaw (Mrs. Hudson’s cat’s name made more and more sense) and eyes closed with pleasure at John’s nails scritching through her fur.

Sherlock, not so much.

The kitten _hated_ Sherlock. 

Sherlock would be testing the coagulation of pig’s blood in the kitchen-island-turned-makeshift-lab, pipetting fluid into a Petri dish, when she would suddenly appear from the doorway and ram into Sherlock’s leg, causing him to spill blood all over the table. Upon Sherlock’s irritated mumbling, she would then latch her claws onto Sherlock’s trousers and refuse to let go, climbing—climbing!—and refusing to stop until Sherlock bent over to forcibly detach her with a flurry of hisses.

Sherlock would be on his laptop, reading about the latest missing persons case in the city, when she would pounce onto the keyboard, closing the tab and opening a whole new slew of applications and windows and error messages. She would roll onto her back, exposing her white, fluffy belly, and then scrape her claws down Sherlock’s hand in long, stinging scratches.

They hardly hurt, of course, less than paper cuts, even, but Sherlock scowled and washed them with disinfectant and glared at the kitten anyway.

John just laughed, and smiled, and murmured to the kitten to _Take it easy, tiger,_ and made playful grabs at her tail while she ran around in circles on the carpet.

“The cat hates me,” Sherlock said.

Next to him, John grumbled, nudged awake from his almost-slumber. “Hmm?”

“The cat,” Sherlock said. They still hadn’t come up with a name, yet. John had proposed a whole bundle, from Meredith to Pepper to Ollie. Sherlock suggested _Jaws._

Turning onto his side to face Sherlock, now, John chuffed. “You’re still hung up over that? I told you already, Sherlock, she doesn’t hate you.”

“Have you _seen_ her?” Sherlock said. “Every time you call her name she comes dashing over like her tail’s been set on fire. And whenever she’s with me…” Sherlock dug his own arm out from where it was pinned under John’s body—John squirming just the slightest, he was ticklish—and raised his own hand, covered in barely-there scratches from the tip of his pinky to the point of his pulse.

John blew out an amused breath. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

Sherlock jolted. “Absolutely not,” he said immediately. “That’s ridiculous. Why should I be?”

“Oh my God,” John murmured, “you are.”

“I’m _not_.”

John’s eyes were dancing. “Of me or the cat?”

“I’m not jealous. Shut up.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll make you.”

“Mm, cheap hit,” John said, but let Sherlock kiss him anyway.

After, John shuffled in closer, his own arm coming up from under the covers to take Sherlock’s hand. He kissed Sherlock’s thumb, where the kitten had bit it that very first night, then traced his way down every finger, smacking a kiss at the centre of his palm before trailing down, further, nipping at his wrist.

“See?” he murmured. “Love bites.”

Sherlock sniffed derisively and didn’t respond. John sighed and threw an arm around him, drawing him closer as they both went back to sleep.

“No.”

“But—”

_“No.”_

“But John—”

“I said no.”

“But—”

“We are not going to use our cat as a _lab rat.”_

“She would enjoy it. Substantially.”

“She would also be high as a kite for over three days, with the doses you’re recommending.”

“It’s just catnip—”

“That’s _cat drugs,_ Sherlock. I didn’t spend months and months getting you clean just to have you pass your addiction issues onto our bloody cat. No. Don’t look at me like that, you know I’m right.”

They still went on cases, sometimes. London crime stopped for no one, not even a cat. 

Usually, they’d ask Mrs. Hudson to kittensit for them, if it wasn’t too much of a hassle—the landlady was all too eager to sit down with a cup of tea in her rocking chair and ambiently stroke the sleeping cat in her lap for hours on end. Fulfilling her true purpose as a cat lady, she joked, and Sherlock kissed her on the cheek and said that she would be one of the best. Sometimes, Mrs. Hudson would be the one to bring it up—casually, she would think, though it was blatantly obvious the ways she inserted the cat into the conversation, knocking on their door for morning tea and whistling that high little squeal that would bring the cat pattering into the room in search of Mrs. Hudson’s famous tuna treats that Chainsaw supposedly _devoured._

That is, until John and Sherlock knocked on her door one day to drop the cat off in her arms, purring and still sleepy from the morning sun. They left for Scotland Yard, spent most of the afternoon chasing a jewellery thief across the city and through the rooftops, and came back wild-eyed and hot-blooded, hearts still pounding a tattoo into their chests.

Sherlock rung on Mrs. Hudson’s door and it opened immediately, as if she had been standing there waiting the whole time.

“Hi—” John started, and then fell into a stunned silence.

“Hello, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock said, picking up the rope where John had dropped it, slack. “Is there something wrong?”

Mrs. Hudson, who was covered entirely head to toe in paint splatters from her hair to her apron to her thin, delicate ankles, just looked at them.

“See for yourselves,” she said grimly, opening the door further. Sherlock entered, John inching in after him, treading the doorjamb like a warzone.

Mrs. Hudson was redecorating her flat. Time for a renovation, she had said cheerily, pulling out a few paintchips from her pocket that morning. After verifying that there was proper ventilation and that the paint was non-toxic, they had dropped her off and commenced the case.

Redecorating indeed. The paint—a rosy pink, like blushing peonies and peaches, was generously splattered throughout the entire flat. From the walls to the carpet to the tablecloth, a pitter-pattering of tiny pawprints was strewn all around, tracking the culprit from the corner of the room to the washroom doors, to halfway up the curtain before leaping onto the coffee table, where an artfully-placed pawprint stood, proudly displayed, on a vase full of daisies.

“Chainsaw would never do such a thing,” Mrs. Hudson said curtly.

“I guess her favourite colour is pink,” John tried weakly. Mrs. Hudson put her hands on her paint-streaked hips and sighed, long-suffering from years of dealing with stubborn, trigger-happy, easily-bored flatmates. Out of all of them, this one might have taken the pink-frosted cake.

“Where is she?” Sherlock asked.

“In the laundry room,” Mrs. Hudson replied. “She’s having a little time-out.”

Sherlock headed towards the end of the hall, and the two of them followed. The very last door was closed. As their footsteps came closer, there suddenly came a scritching noise—and then a long, pitiful wail, full of heartbreak and betrayal.

“Oh, don’t you dare try that,” Mrs. Hudson said snippily. “You know exactly what you did, you little brat, you.”

Sherlock opened the door—and then stepped back, nearly stumbling, when a splotch of salmon pink streaked out of the laundry room and down the hall.

“Not again,” came Mrs. Hudson’s mournful muttering, when John and Sherlock gave chase.

Sherlock reached her first, right as she rounded the corner to the kitchen, swooping down low to scoop her up. Her fur was damp; his nostrils stung with the astringent scent of fresh paint. The cat flailed in his arms and Sherlock tightened his hold, pulled her in closer, already surrendering his (fourth) favourite shirt to the stamping of pink pawprints.

“Behave,” he mumbled at her. “That is, if you want any of Mrs. Hudson’s tuna treats ever again.”

Miraculously, she settled down. Her claws dug into Sherlock’s shoulder one last time before retracting, burrowing her head instead into his chest.

“Oh, Jesus,” John said, coming closer. He stroked her back and grimaced when his hand came off wet. “That’s gonna be an arse to wash off.”

“Even harder to get off satin tablecloth,” Mrs. Hudson cut in.

“Sorry,” John said, having the decency to sound sheepish. He turned his attention to the cat, next, voice going softly chastising. “Hey, what’d you do that for, huh? Look at the mess you’ve made.”

The cat shuffled around to peer up at them, her eyes huge and wet and pitiful, all bleeding innocence. Forget puppy eyes—she had those down to an art form. 

Sherlock stroked her ears, flaky from nearly-dried paint. He rubbed his fingers together absentmindedly.

“Picasso,” he suddenly said. “Her name is Picasso.”

From where he had turned back to apologizing to Mrs. Hudson, John fell silent. “What, you’re serious?”

Sherlock nodded. “Sorry, Mrs. Hudson,” he said. “I might have some solvent you can use for your tablecloth.”

With that, he turned towards the door. “Come on, John—let’s get her cleaned up.”

In his arms, Picasso purred and butted her head against Sherlock’s hand.

Picasso still hated him. Sherlock was sure of that.

Yes, maybe they had come to an agreement that as long as Sherlock didn’t try to analyze her fur or her spit or her blood, god forbid, she wouldn’t destroy his lab samples or vomit in his slippers or try to brutalize his violin whenever he played it, screeching and wailing along—but she still clawed at him and batted at his hair and tried to climb up his arm with her sharp little claws, and Sherlock still had constant scratches and red marks on his hands from whenever she nipped at his fingers when he petted her ears.

And then the doorbell rang one day—a cloudy, nondescript Thursday afternoon, when John and Sherlock were having tea and biscuits while reading the paper and browsing the internet—and Sherlock heard the timbre of the bell, the pressure and time for which it was pressed for, and both him and John said, simultaneously, “Mycroft.”

Mycroft was holding his umbrella in his hands, even though the forecast said no rain until the weekend. He was smiling that smarmy smile that made Sherlock want to put chili flakes in his coffee and hide his favourite chess set all over again.

“What do you want,” Sherlock said flatly.

Mycroft’s smile turned thin. “Can’t I say hi to my little brother anymore?”

“I already told you I didn’t want to do the Petersberg case,” Sherlock said. “Taking a phrase from your boyfriend— _not my division.”_

“Playing dirty, now, are we?” Mycroft said mildly, and Sherlock opened his mouth to retort when, all of a sudden, a tiny bundle of Calico fur dashed into view and, hissing and spitting up a storm, collided into Mycroft’s legs.

“What on Earth—” Mycroft stumbled back. “What _is_ that?”

“It’s a cat,” John said, coming to the doorway now, too. “Her name is Picasso.”

“A cat,” Mycroft repeated, and then his lips curled up and his eyebrows flattened. “I’m _allergic_ to cats.”

“I know,” Sherlock said, watching Picasso dash around Mycroft’s legs, pouncing and growling and yipping, with a slow-burn feeling of glee.

“Why have you got a _cat?”_ Mycroft let out a small, floundering noise as Picasso made an attempt to claw her way up his ankles. “Growing soft in your old age?”

“Extra security, more like,” John said quietly, mostly to Sherlock, as Mycroft brandished his umbrella at Picasso, who hissed and clawed a strip down its waterproof fabric. She had never been this blatantly furious, eyes narrowed and nearly spitting with contempt.

“This is ridiculous,” Mycroft finally snapped out. His nose was twitching, and his eyes were beginning to blink faster. “Sherlock, expect a car to be waiting for you tomorrow at four. We will discuss this without any _vermin_ around.”

“I can’t see how we can discuss anything with you not there,” Sherlock said sweetly.

“Come, Picasso,” John said, and Picasso stopped her ambush long enough for John to scoop her up and for Sherlock to shut the door in Mycroft’s flushed and furious face.

It clicked shut, and they were silent for a moment before both bursting into uncontrollable bouts of bubbling laughter.

“Good girl, Picasso,” John cooed, scratching behind her ears.

“That was worth every box of cat litter,” Sherlock declared.

“We should take her on cases,” John mused. “She has some wicked sharp claws. Sharp enough to draw blood, for sure—more than that, even.”

He looked up and towards Sherlock, a strange little light in his eyes. “And, might I add, _much_ more than what she does to you.”

Sherlock faltered, and then fell into a consideration.

“Picasso,” he said slowly, very carefully.

In John’s arms, Picasso stirred, then looked up.

“Come here, Picasso,” Sherlock said, keeping his voice soft, low. He reached out, and John placed her into his arms. 

Immediately, Picasso began to fidget. She twisted her body around until she was facing Sherlock, and then, locked on target, began to crawl her way up Sherlock’s shirt—claws digging into his skin, but never drawing blood, never more than a pinprick. This time, Sherlock stayed still.

Picasso climbed until she was all the way up on Sherlock’s shoulder, her body draped over the back of his neck like a warm, cuddly scarf, and then she settled down, melting into place with a quiet, content purr. A lazy, curious paw flitted up and batted at Sherlock’s ear before she took it into her mouth, tiny inquisitive kittenlicks and sharp nips of teeth. Pinpricks.

Sherlock said, “Ouch,” even though it didn’t hurt, not really. Not at all. John was looking at the two of them the way Picasso did with a platter of fresh cold cream—that is to say, triumphant, pleased, and utterly satisfied.

“Don’t say it,” Sherlock said. John just grinned.

Sherlock was awoken by a damp, warm paw descending right onto his sternum. With a quiet _oof_ he raised his head from the pillow, and stared right back at a pair of glowing green eyes.

Next to them, John was still asleep, chest rising and falling evenly.

“What?” Sherlock whispered.

Picasso blinked at him, languid, and then stretched out her long, graceful body before settling herself down right on Sherlock’s chest.

“Oh—no,” Sherlock said, voice still quiet but firmer, now. “Picasso, we have had this conversation before.”

Picasso didn’t move. Her eyes were closed, now, and in the dim, dark-blue light of the moon through the curtains, the shadow of her tail swished lazily.

“You’ll get fur all over the mattress,” Sherlock murmured. “You’ll vomit all over the pillows after having a nightmare.”

Picasso was stubborn as a statue.

“John won’t be happy,” Sherlock tried one last time, but his eyes were falling closed, too, half-lidded, and his hand was coming up to rest on Picasso’s warm body.

Picasso squirmed one last time before settling down entirely. In her sleep, she began to purr, deep and loud as a muscle car.

> _Good artists copy. Great artists steal._
> 
> —Pablo Picasso

**Author's Note:**

> As per Pablo Picasso's advice, I blatantly stole the cat in this fic from my friend's cat, who is actually named Picasso. 
> 
> So... it's been a while ^^ Fandom-hopped for a bit but here I am, back again, and I have to say that writing these two—especially in an established relationship—is still one of my favourite dynamics.
> 
> I've drifted out of touch with this fandom recently, so for those of you reading this now, I hope everything is doing well. Stay safe, and I hope this fic gave you a bit of happiness <3


End file.
